Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you on or around the 20th. 
The long-awaited NABC signature glassware line finally has materialized (thanks, Judy).
Recently I had the ill fortune to receive in the mail one of those incredibly annoying “beer market” magazines, in which people like SAB-Miller’s international division chief prattles through endless paragraphs about “positioning” Italy’s dreadfully boring Peroni beer alongside other fashionable signature Italian brands like Gucci and Versace (like I know anything about fashion), but of course never delves into how much like every other international golden lager it really is -- how utterly forgettable, but "placed" on the menu at every Italian restaurant in the world, as though it has something to offer Italian cuisine.Damn it, I want to taste smoked beer with enchiladas, and IPA with antipasto. Is it too much to ask?
End of rant.
Is it vacation yet?
I’m retiring my favorite beer glass.
Bistro New Albany's embryonic web site is up: Bistro New Albany.
The food's been good as ever (last Saturday night, the place was packed, but my blackened sirloin was perfectly prepared on the cool side of medium rare, and topped with a delicious heirloom tomato relish), and all ten taps are up and running.
As of this writing, the draft lineup looks something like this:
BBC Alt (or APA)
NABC Bob's Old 15-B
NABC Community Dark
NABC Croupier IPA
NABC Elector
NABC (rotating seasonal; currently Strathpeffer Heather)
Newcastle Brown
Sierra Nevada Pale Ale
Stella Artois
Upland Wheat
One of our longterm servers at NABC, Richard Atnip, has been pulling duty at the Bistro, and I'm told that he'll soon be assisting the Daves with the beer selection. That's good news.
I’ve told you before about the day in 1983 when my life changed forever.
A few months later, I visited the public library for a completely unrelated reason, and walking down the aisle, happened to pass the travel section. The first title that caught my eye was “Europe on $25 a Day,” by Arthur Frommer.
This prompted a double take. Was it a misprint? A scam? Could it really be true? Skeptical but suddenly curious, I checked out the book and took it home, poured a beer, and started reading.
Cue the orchestral swell and unleash the starburst.
For most twenty-something males, it would have required the woman of their dreams running bikini-clad across a beach during a rainstorm to elicit such a response as Frommer’s book did from me, for in it, there were clear and solidly reasoned tips for how to do Europe right … and for longer than a week.
More than two decades later, much about a trip to Europe has changed, and I needn’t enumerate the list of ATM availability, cell phone usage and flights price lower than trains to make the point that one must always be sufficiently nimble to adapt to altered circumstances.
At the same time, the fundamental things still apply, and in spite of being far more financially secure now than in those far-off days of youth, I still can’t bring myself to follow the tips generally provided in the typical “travel” section of the Sunday New York Times.
A case in point: “Going to Stockholm," by Denny Lee (Sunday, August 6, 2006; may require registration).
There’s a template of sorts for articles like this, and accordingly, Lee provides the accustomed overview of the target destination before proceeding to tips on hotels, eateries and activities.
For a place to sleep, he offers the Grand Hotel ($514 per room, per night) before descending to a lesser priced luxury choice at around $200). Two “intriguing” budget hotels are mentioned in passing, but without quoted prices.
For the “hottest” dining in town at present, Lee directs the reader to a $100-plus meal for two, “wine excluded.” Budget travelers are introduced to Stockholm’s hot dog stands for hangover-reduction meals running closer to $10 a plate.
So far, nothing about Lee’s article is unexpected, given the free-lancer’s understandable aim to write in accordance with the NYT’s target readership in mind. That he mentions “budget” options at all is somewhat miraculous.
However, the Curmudgeon takes issue with this comment:
One place to avoid is Kvarnen (Tjarhovsgatan 4, 46-8-64-03-80; http://www.kvarnen.com/), a wood-paneled beer hall that charges a ridiculous coat check fee (15 kronor), even during the summer.
Having been to Stockholm only twice, I can’t speak for the ambience in the Kvarnen, and it may well be a place to avoid for reasons of smoke, perfume or stale beer. The web site shows nine beers on tap, most of them imported, with prices in the $8 (a glass) range that are entirely typical for Scandinavia, where cheap beer is hard to find outside of crates of supermarket-vended bottles.
But wine up north is expensive, too, given that none of it is made in Sweden, and consequently all of it must be imported. Even with generous EU wine subsidies, you might as well double the price of the $100 meal to include a decent bottle of wine – and if you’re prepared to pay that much, why not spend it on indigenous Swedish-made beer and spirits?
Furthermore, as odd as it may be to charge 15 kronor for a coat check, such a practice obviously is intended as a cover charge, in this case a cover charge totaling $2, which the author – who began by recommending a $514 hotel room – inexplicably finds outrageous.
My fondest memory of Stockholm in 1985 is roaming the city’s many islands during the late July warmth, and noting how very different the more comprehensive sunbathing habits are there compared with the modesty demanded of the Bible Belt.
The city quite possibly isn’t the best place to drink inexpensive beer, but voyeurism remains a very affordable pleasure, I hope.
The New Albany Tribune publishes a weekly syndicated medical focus page from the Harvard Medical School, and today’s entry was titled, “"Gender inequality in the effects of alcohol."
Here is the link to the same story, but from a different newspaper. Unfortunately, the on-line version has been edited to exclude this passage:
Dark beers contain more alcohol than light beers.
Not necessarily!
Why expend two thousand words in the name of science if a simple fact like this can’t be gotten right?
A Polish “Mocne” (malt liquor) is golden, and contains 8% alcohol, as do most Belgian "tripels."
An English mild or Irish draft stout is dark, and contains 5% or less.
I could go on, but you get the idea. Does the Harvard Medical Faculty believe that bock beer comes from the once-yearly cleaning of the brewing system?
How pleasingly timely, considering I’ll be there in a little more than three weeks.
Recently a diligent patron dropped off a current beer list from Jack Fry’s Restaurant, and as I was looking it over it occurred to me that information like this may be of interest to readers.
Admittedly, it’s been a couple of years since I’ve dined at Jack Fry’s, but the experience has been uniformly excellent during these past visits.
Here’s the history of the restaurant, as described by Louisville restaurant critic Robin Garr at Robin Garr’s Louisville Restaurant Guide:
The original namesake and owner, Jack Fry, started a neighborhood tavern with the repeal of Prohibition in 1933 and ran it as a local institution until the late '70s, whereupon - gentrifying in step with the neighborhood it's in - it went upscale under new management, shedding its stale-beer-and-peanuts ambience in favor of something just as comfy if a bit more dressy.
And suddenly it's been a quarter of a century, and the "new" Jack Fry's has earned a place in Louisville's heart.
That's what I call enduring popularity, and Fry's has earned it the old-fashioned way, by consistently offering excellent fare in a comfortable setting. I rarely leave here after a meal without a happy, satisfied smile.
For the food menu at Jack Fry’s and further information, visit the restaurant’s web site.
Here’s the beer list, with the price following the beer. I’m assuming all these are 12-oz. bottled selections; it’s possible that a mainstream lager is on draft.
BBC Altbier 4
Bitburger Pilsner 4
Pilsner Urquell 4
Hoegaarden 5
Harp Lager 4
Sierra Nevada 4
Anchor Steam 5
Bell’s “Oberon” Summer Ale 5
Samuel Smith “Nut Brown Ale” 7
Rogue “St. Rogue Red Ale” 5
Abita “Turbo Dog” Dark Brown Ale 4
Fuller’s ESB 5
Hennepin “Belgium Style Ale” 6
Orval Trappist Ale 10
Guinness Stout 5
At the bottom, and appropriately, there are insignificant others: Budweiser, Bud Light, Miller Lite and Beck’s NA ($3 each) and Amstel Light ($4).
Jack Fry’s qualifies as “upscale” in the Curmudgeon’s lexicon, and this perhaps explains $10 for an Orval, although it strikes me as gouging to charge $5 for a bottle of Oberon. The remainder seem reasonably priced considering the setting.
As with other restaurants of a similar ctaegory, good beer may not be the reason you choose to go ... but it helps to know that it's there, all the same.
Don’t let me be misunderstood.
I’m not calling out Food & Dining magazine, which pays me to write beer columns, or Jay Forman, who contributed a humor column to the "Summer, 2006" edition of the consistently excellent magazine.
At the same time, you are advised to bear in mind that neither contrarians nor curmudgeons voluntarily eschew the delicate art of the quibble.
The writer Forman’s column isn’t archived on-line, but it’s a genuinely funny rumination about simplicity of taste versus the multiplicity of choices in food and drink.
The author first suffers an anxiety attack trying to distinguish between the many types of honey on display at a natural foods mega-store, then extends his “when does experimentation and the mixing of genres become too much?” analogy to chocolate bars and beer before tackling perceptions of exhibitionism in fusion cuisine.
On the topic of beer, Forman writes:
All this harkens back to the onset of the microbrew craze in the mid-90s. Back then there was an explosion of new beers, some containing extremely wrong ingredients like oatmeal and pumpkin. I applaud that whole movement … but for every new beer flavor that scored, about 20 or so shanked wide right and tumbled ingloriously into the cheap seats of food history.
Wrong ingredients?
According to whom?
The problem here is that for the sake of an ephemeral chuckle, historical perspective is being sacrificed – and inaccuracies like that tend to bother me. In this instance, we’re left with the impression that the use of oatmeal and pumpkins in beer represents a disturbing New Age bastardization of tradition.
It took me less than five minutes on the Internet to find ample refutation for this thesis.
From about.com:
The colonists used pumpkin not only as a side dish and dessert, but also in soups and even made beer of it.
From Beer Advocate:
For instance, a particular sub-style of the stout genre, which doesn't get the respect it deserves, is the Oatmeal Stout. Its history dates back to the mid- to late 1800s, with the discovery that adding oats to beer made it healthier.
Verily, it would appear that the use of oatmeal and pumpkins in beer did not originate during the Clinton Administration, but rather are indicative of an often utilitarian but admittedly sometimes frivolous creativity that nonetheless has been extant since beer was first brewed in ancient times.
What about other contemporary examples of adding unconventional ingredients to beer?
Coriander and orange peel in Belgian Wit?
Sorry, that pre-hopping practice extends back to the spiced “gruit” ales of the Middle Ages.
Smoked chipotle peppers?
Here’s what Rogue has to say about its delicious Chipotle Ale:
Dedicated to Spanish author Juan de la Cueva, who, in 1575, wrote of a Mexican dish that combined seedless chipotles with beer: Chipotle Ale is based on Rogue's Oregon Golden Ale, but delicately spiced with smoked chipotle chile peppers.
Sounds like a relevant culinary antecedent to me.
Don’t worry; I’m not about to defend the practice of adding bananas, passion fruit and entire sugar plantations to traditional Belgian lambic. In a similar vein, there certainly have been examples of the experimental genre that have failed in the fashion cited by Jay Forman in his article.
Once at the Great American Beer Festival, I tasted a beer called Anthracite Porter. They wouldn’t admit to using real coal in it, although it certainly tasted that way.
However, in the end, the history of fermentation is all about innovation, from well before the time when hops were used to balance the sweet malt, and up to the current age, when coffee, chamomile and cayenne might each be deployed to create new flavor sensations.
Don’t forget the Curmudgeon’s Axiom: It’s a permanent revolution, and it you’ve found the one beer you like … it’s time to start over.
I’ll let my friend Lew Bryson answer in this article from a few years back in Beverage Business, a Massachusetts beer biz magazine.
"A contract brewer is a fraud!" ... "No, a contract brewer is a good customer." ... "Contract-brewed beer is no good." ... "Contract-brewed beer? It's great!" ... "Contract-brewed beer? What's that?"
Don't forget to visit Lew's site for endless and entertaining reading.
